Your Gifts at Work

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Today is a relaxation day for Veronica Garcia ’16. For two days a week, she’s primarily in photography class, and the rest of her week is spent studying and exploring the city of Kyoto, Japan. So she’ll grab coffee in a café, walk around the city, and contemplate her individual research project.

When Pat Flynn began the Custodial Scholarship Fund for Carleton students in 1993, she hoped it would continue past her retirement—but she had no idea it would one day benefit her own granddaughter, Lily Eisenthal ’16.

Alexandra Mayn, better known as Sasha, always knew she’d need to leave home to get the education she wanted. A native of Kazan, Russia, Sasha loves the classics, Latin and linguistics. But in Russia, she says, education emphasizes memorizing facts over cultivating skills.

Coming from a town with a population smaller than Carleton’s, Ben Pletta ’16 often finds describing his college experience to people back home difficult. Even though they’re in the same state, most people from the solidly blue-collar town of West Concord, Minn., have never head of Carleton.

Gifts to the Carleton Athletic Initiative help students stay active and fit—but there are countless other benefits too. Sports teach teamwork, perservance, and the importance of balancing work and play. Hear about it firsthand from women's rugby player Erica Sheline ’15.

Something about Carleton pushed him to be different, John Cannon '15 says.

Although he considered himself an average student in high school, coming to Carleton opened up a world of possibilities for him. “They push you to learn who you are here,” says Cannon, from Toronto. “And I realized I could be anyone I wanted to be.”

More than anything, Tenzin Rigden ’15 says his parents motivate him to succeed. They both have emigrated twice—once from Tibet to India, then again from India to the United States. His father worked two jobs, all so the family could have a better life.

“We always struggled a lot,” Tenzin says. “My sister came to Carleton first—she graduated in 2011—and we’re the first generation to go to college in our family.”

Junior Anna Guasco's experience in an academic civic engagement (ACE) course inspired her to approach environmental issues from an American Studies perspective and research Channel Islands in a way that had never been done before.